


Jack-a-dandy

by caldefrance



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anal Sex, Boredom, Clothed Sex, Community: theoldguardkinkmeme, Dressing, Espionage, Gift Giving, Haberdashery, Historical, Intimacy, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Oral Sex, Piracy, Prostitution, Short Story, costume drama, seven-hundred-year itch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:53:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27715703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caldefrance/pseuds/caldefrance
Summary: Joe and Nicky remembered 1719 as the nadir of their relationship. After Andromache left them behind in London to carry on the search for Quynh, a measure of distance had grown between them as their connection turned cold and stilted. Jo even worried that Nico might leave him next and sought to find a way to renew their intimacy. Drawing on his merchant's eye for finery, Jo presented Nico with a gift of fine silk stockings so they might again feel the closeness they had found when they first travelled the Silk Road together.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 18
Kudos: 116





	Jack-a-dandy

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written as a response to two prompts posted to theoldguardkinkmeme:
> 
> https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/2487.html?thread=431031#cmt431031
> 
> “At some point, they have to have this conversation: would we even be here if we didn’t have to? Do we love each other or are we making the best out of a tough situation?”
> 
> https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/7005.html?thread=2489949#cmt2489949
> 
> “Joe buys Nicky some very pretty stockings!”  
> “Bonus if they have cute bows on them!”  
> “Can be smut or can be fluff (or both!)”

Jo wanted nothing more than Nico’s attention.

He leaned in to press a kiss to his lover’s nape, taking advantage of a private moment between them, only to stop short when the man he loved beyond measure and reason shrugged away from him.

“ _Yusuf_ ,” Nico sighed, using his lover’s true name, to better express his frustration. “I am attempting to focus.”

Jo bit his tongue, quickly turning his head away, trying to hide his anguish from being given the brush-off.

_One day your love just doesn’t feel the same anymore. . . . We don’t know when or why._

He had only wanted to distract his companion from work he found tedious, but his rejection—and the chance that things had changed again between them—left him feeling cold.

Yusuf and Nicolò were in London—living as Nicholas and Josef, confirmed bachelors—waiting to find some sign from Andromache.

She had left them in _Anno Domini_ 1719 to carry on the search for their lost friend and to harass the slave traders on the seaway between Portsmouth and Nassau and Charleston.

She had single-mindedly determined to keep searching for her oldest friend or anyone on that ship who could tell her where she was cast off, even decades after she was lost. _Where did you take her?_ She wouldn’t hear reason, that there was nothing they could try that would lead them to finding her. _I made her a promise! Until the end!_ She wouldn’t admit defeat or even accept that she’d lost her oldest friend and companion. _I lost a soldier._ She took all her guilt and her heartbreak and she directed all that energy towards finding her and to any sea-faring venture that would support her search.

Josef and Nicholas had decided to stay behind. _And then what?_ They knew the lives of buccaneers and corsairs were brutish, painful, and short. They had heard stories that claimed notorious pirates were always hung in chains—kept displayed and exposed at port entrances as an example to all. _We are done._ They shuddered to imagine the other being arrested—imprisoned—caged—hung—caught in a cycle of death and undeath and unable to move or break free. They dreaded the risk of capture. _Peace be with you._ They feared losing each other to a death sentence that was imposed again and again, over and over, as they spent eternity in a cage.

They had agreed only to involve themselves in her reckless crusade when word inevitably reached them of her capture and trial for piracy.

They were tracking reports of a woman in male dress working with renowned pirate crews and convicted felons to commit crimes the King’s bench designated as Piracies, Felonies, and Robberies committed on the High Sea. They had gathered that Andromache had taken to stealing ships and guns—taking valuable prizes like a schooner and its cargo of 50 rolls of tobacco, 9 bags of pimento, and 10 slaves. They also suspected she had participated in the blockade of Charleston, kidnapping important residents for ransom and closing the port to the trade in chattel slaves. They learned how the woman they used to know had become tangled up in a murky business—associating with free-traders and traffickers and colonists and agents of the Company—that was denounced and idolized in equal measure by the city’s pressrooms and coffee houses that informed public opinion.

They had taken to gathering their information from the source rather than from broadsides and hearsay, by diverting letters that passed through London’s black chamber—a laboratory set up by the government, dedicated to intercepting diplomatic and private correspondence—in Abchurch Lane, located near St. Paul’s.

They had imagined that they might also discover something in these letters like a drawing-room plot or a popular rising or a land war. They wanted to find some situation where they might get involved and really do some good. They could see how the world was changing around them—how the moderns were in conflict with the ancients, how self-government was replacing the old dynasties—and it was becoming harder to do things only for the right reasons. In this century, when Enlightenment thinkers began to favour reason over tradition even as they rallied in support of exploitative and imperialist enterprises, if they wanted to fight for what they thought was right that entailed fact-finding hack work.

They had set up their own secret laboratory in the rooms they had taken in St Giles. They had a brazier, to heat a kettle that would spout the steam needed to soften wax seals and to heat wires to loosen them. They had also prepared a soft clay amalgam to take the impression of each seal, and reproduce it, in case the original broke in the process.

They had hired boys to steal bags of mail at random from Abchurch Lane, as they were transferred again to the postal service, and deliver them to their rooms. They had to perform the same tedious work each day—flipping through and paring down the pile of correspondence to identify the letters worth unsealing, reading, copying or forging, and resealing.

They had taken to playing games of chance to settle who would take on the work that was considered a hanging offense under England’s bloody legal code.

Nicholas had pulled the short straw that morning. _Non si preoccupi. It’s only a job._ He had installed himself at the small side table placed near the window with large glass panes, making use of the grey light, as he steamed and opened and copied the purloined letters.

Josef had tried to occupy himself while his companion worked—sketching his profile, practising lines, grazing absent-mindedly on some dried fruit that had been left out by the maid-of-all-work. He let himself pace a little, wandering between their shared bedroom and the sitting room, working through his restlessness. He went to look out the large panes of the sash window, to watch strangers pass them by as they moved down the street, and then back at his companion, who continued working as though he weren’t even in the room.

Nicholas was ignoring him.

Josef sighed, as he leaned against the sooty window panes and loosened the stock knotted around his throat, feeling uneasy.

_Nothing that lasts, lasts forever._

They had learned that no one could spend forever together—no, not even the two of them who had always had each other. They understood that they would be parted in time, just as Andromache and Quynh had been in the end.

_I think it’s like destiny._

Nicholas was steadfast. He had always shown an unwavering faith in their connection—that they were destined to find each other and to spend their lives fighting thousands of battles and living thousands of lives by each other’s side.

Josef didn’t doubt his feelings, but he had noticed a change in them. He had noticed a measure of distance had grown between them, since they had lost Quynh and Andromache left. He had felt their connection turn cool and stilted. He would turn to the man with whom he shared everything time and again, reach out to him, and fall short of capturing his interest in return. 

Nicholas had always shown more restraint in his affections than Josef.

Josef loved Nicholas beyond measure and reason.

He worried that the man he loved no longer felt as he did.

He even worried that his _innamorato_ would eventually choose to stay by his side out of duty rather than devotion.

Josef imagined that he would need to turn to Nicholas one day, having taken the decision to end things between them, and say—it’s time, and nothing you can do will stop it.

He wanted to shout into the silence that had grown to fill the spaces they shared. He couldn’t imagine throwing away the hundreds of years they spent—passionately, for good or ill—together. He would have to find a way—come hell or high water—to recapture the warmth and intimacy that they had found hundreds of years ago.

Josef shivered and moved away from the single-pane windows. He went to hover near the brazier and the man he loved, basking in the warmth of standing near him.

He watched his lover flip through sheaves of correspondence, seemingly without paying him any mind, as he composed a doggerel verse to try and convey his depth of feeling.

_Thou art the moon when I am lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold._

Nicholas paused, turning to him, and for a moment Josef imagined that they were of one mind.

“ _Ti amo_ ,” Josef admitted.

Nicholas sighed and Josef felt his heart catch in his throat.

“I love you, more than you can even dream,” Josef confessed, deciding to reveal everything that was weighing on him. “But I have to know—do you still love me or do you stay with me because you feel it’s your _destino_?”

Josef couldn’t even breathe as he waited for Nicholas to give his answer.

“I love you,” Nicholas snapped at him, with an offhandedness that Jo found upset him. ”I really do, but I find your presence distracting. I don’t suppose I could ask you to stop.”

“You wish me to stop loving you?” Josef asked, taken aback.

“Stop being ridiculous!” Nicholas shouted, waving his hands in the air. “I mean the way you’ve been acting, Jo! All the hovering! Mooning about! Demanding my attention!”

Josef crossed his arms, feeling defensive, but reluctant to quarrel with him. “It’s been over a year, Nico. We need a break.”

“Why don’t you go out?” Nicholas proposed, waving him off as he shook a cramp from his writing hand. “Take some air and come back later, after I’ve finished with this.”

Josef decided to leave before he said something worth regretting or heard something he would be unable to forget. He shrugged on his greatcoat and straightened his stock and covered his curly hair with a sober tricorn hat. He also grabbed his purse and his walking stick before firmly shutting the door behind him.

Josef stood, fuming a little, as he fastened the buttons of his greatcoat before stepping into the street and turning toward Tottenham Court Road.

They had taken rooms in St Giles, a neighbourhood that had become a landing place for French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution. 

Josef had noticed that many of their new neighbours were weavers and cloth-merchants, people with whom he felt a kinship in spite of their different beliefs as the scion of a family that had had a part to play in the trade in textiles.

He saw a couple of Huguenots—a him and a her—returning from the church of St Giles in the Fields as he stepped around a puddle in the road. They were dressed in their finest clothes, with bright woollens and filigreed details and ribbons and silk hose, in a colourful contrast to the more sober clothing of the other passers-by and the destitute that dwelled nearby.

He passed them and he heard them laugh together and he felt jealous of their closeness.

Josef could remember how he used to make Nicholas laugh.

He treasured fond memories of the closeness they had enjoyed when preparing a meal together, rubbing shoulders, in the small kitchen of the _kamra_ they had taken in Malta. _Did you put it all in? Nico, that’s too much harissa! I rather like it piccante. Bah! I think you only want to see me suffer!_ He made _tajine_ as his mother’s helper had taught him—in a seasoned clay pot with poultry and spices and olives and preserved lemon and honey and broth—and let Nico adulterate it to suit his taste for spicy food. _I need more lubrificare. Olio, acqua. Not for that, you loon! It’s for the couscous!_ Nico batted Jo away with hands that were covered in semolina flour as he worked the dough into small granules of _couscous_ that would soak up the drippings from the _tajine_. _Move over, Nico, I need to add another log to the hearth. I did that already! I know you did, habibi, but I want to see you sweat a little more._ They bickered and distracted each other, dancing and kissing, as they waited for the stew to simmer and fill the room with the smell of a meal worth partaking. _Mmm! Questo è peccaminoso! We’re making such a mess!_ They had laughed and teased and hand-fed each other, making a mess of wood ash and semolina flour and poultry drippings, as they satisfied their ravenous appetites.

He suddenly wished they could spend time cooking together again. They hadn’t prepared a meal like that since they had settled in London and taken rooms without a scullery or a hearth equipped with a range. They had become accustomed to taking all their meals from public houses or from street vendors or from whatever cold collation the girl they paid to clean their rooms set out for them. They had stopped eating together and they had settled in to living separate lives side by side.

He was distracted from his day-dreaming thoughts by a lad rushing past him, shouting—“Jack-a-dandy!”—as he pushed one of the fashionably-dressed congregants had been shoved into the large puddle of stagnant water and was spluttering and raging about his stained clothes. He quickly went on his way, discomfited, before any blame could land on him.

Josef then made his way to Covent Garden, wondering whether he and his companion might instead take in a play, perhaps one of the new comedies by Charles Molloy or Charles Johnson, and made his way toward the theatre district known as Coven Garden to make enquiries.

He knew the area near Drury Lane housed play houses as well as a market—where the flower-sellers sold their wares and their bodies.

He found a crowd gathered near Moll King’s Coffee House, listening to a ballad-singer relate the story of _Robinson Crusoe_ —an Englishman of the middling sort who had been shipwrecked and whose story had been published the year before.

_Perhaps you’ve read in a book,  
Of a voyage he took,  
And how the raging whirlwind blew so—  
That the ship with a shock,  
Drove plump on a rock,  
Near drowning poor Robinson Crusoe._

He looked around and saw a mixed crowd had gathered—flower-sellers and their patrons, drunkards, vagrants, urchins, and a priggish maid or two. He could see proselytizers and promoters standing further off, but all the crowd near him were listening to the slow voice of a younger lad with a scruffy beard relate a story from a book none could afford.

_Poor soul! none but he,  
Remain’d on the sea,  
Ah, fate! fate! how could you do so?  
Till ashore he was thrown,  
On an island unknown,  
Oh, poor Robinson Crusoe!_

He felt moved by this story he could relate to. He could remember what it was like—to feel exposed and confused and more scared than he ever was in his entire life. He felt grateful that he hadn’t been alone.

He dug in his purse for a penny to tip the ballad-singer.

_At last an English sail_  
Came near within hail,  
Oh— 

“If you’ve a guinea to spare,” he heard a voice at his elbow say, “ye’re welcomer to take me, Sir.”

He looked askance, realizing belatedly that a flower-seller had identified him as her next mark. She had a dark complexion, with raven-coloured tresses, and a sweaty brow. She looked like she worked hard for her money.

_Would you have taken a wife?_

Josef remembered then when Nicholas had asked him whether he had ever considered marrying. He remembered kissing away his lover’s doubts that arose whenever they discussed the women that appeared in their dreams. He had no doubts as to why they had fallen into bed together again and again.

He told him that he believed that they had mated for life and if he were ever lost to him, he would wander the earth calling out for his lost love.

The man he loved had laughed and called him love-mad.

He remembered how he had pressed his suit, kissing his lover’s hands and wrists and chest and neck and beardless visage until he had yielded and he had had him again.

Josef shook his head, clearing the memory, and saw that the girl had chosen to pursue another target.

He felt disconcerted at being singled out that way and decided to quit Covent Garden before he also lost his purse.

He continued walking towards the Thames river as he considered his best course of action. He didn’t need a diversion, he decided. He needed a grand gesture.

Josef now remembered a time when he accompanied Nicholas to the legendary _suq_ in Aleppo when they had first travelled together. He had taken his companion by the hand, leading him through the wooden arcades, and watched him marvel at the rugs and the silks and the spices and the filigreed jewellery. He felt sure he could still remember what his companion had said, when he touched silk cloth for the first time.

_Guarda! Yusuf! È come un sussurro! They have spun a whisper into cloth._

Josef smiled to himself as he remembered the easy companionship they had found in the years they had spent travelling along the Silk Road, before they had met Andromache and Quynh or learned that their unending lives were finite.

He hoped to recapture a bit of that same feeling of wonder now and made his way towards the shopping arcade at the New Exchange, a covered market with two long galleries, where vendors sold fashionable garments and millinery and haberdashery and books and things.

He found what he was looking for in the stall of a vendor who had hung delicate garments from a line across his shop window, advertising his imported wares.

“Can I be of service to you, sir?”

He explained what he was looking for—spun-silk undergarments—and a few lengths of ribbon.

“Is this for yourself, sir, or your lady wife?”

“My spouse,” Josef said, feeling heat rise to his cheeks, feeling discomposed by the assumptions made by the shopkeeper.

“That’s good, then. I’ve some find silk stockings—with or without lace detailing.”

“Without, I think,” he decided, on seeing the delicate fabric of ladies’ stockings.

“That would be why you’ll be wanting the ribbon, I suppose.”

“Certainly.”

“And the ribbon?”

“Pardon?”

“Any preference on colour? Length? Strength?”

“Two lengths of half an _ell_ in a green. It has to be green like _eau de Nil_.”

Josef gave careful consideration to three strips of sea-green fabric offered by the vendor and decided on the shade he imagined would match the colour of Nico’s eyes.

“Shall I wrap these for you, sir?”

“In plain paper please.”

“Of course, sir. That’ll be a guinea and five shillings.”

Josef searched his purse for 1£ 6/-, more than a year’s income for a clerk, before negotiating down the price to a 1£ 1/- and paid him.

He left the New Exchange in good spirits, clutching the valuable package to his chest, and made his way back toward St Giles.

Josef felt his heart race when he reached the door to their boarding house, as he clutched his package and his walking stick against his breast and knocked.

Jane, the maid, answered the door. “Wellcome back, Mr. Kay,” she said, bobbing her capped head at him in polite greeting.

“Thank you, Jane. Is he still in?”

“Aye, Sir. Mr. Goode has no left.”

Josef nodded, as he walked past her and up the stairs, feeling more than a little trepidation as he rapped on the door to their rooms.

Nicholas answered, wearing a _banyan_ —a loose garment like a dressing gown, made of brilliant green silk, worn over his shirt and breeches, with a soft red turban-like cap. Josef felt a little heartened to see him wearing it, as he had also purchased that outfit for him.

“You’ve come back,” Nicholas said, avoiding his gaze.

“I have,” Josef replied, cautiously, trying to gauge his reception. “Can I come in?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Nicholas said, moving abruptly away from the doorway to let him in.

“Wait,” Josef called out, grabbing at the sleeve of his _banyan_. “I bought you something.”

Nicholas turned back toward him and accepted the gift, his expression remaining inscrutable. “ _Grazie_.” 

Josef set his walking stick in the umbrella stand and removed his tricorn hat and greatcoat.

Nicholas still hesitated. “Shall I open it now?”

“If you’d like,” Josef said, breathless from anticipation, as the moment he’d prepared for unfolded slowly between them.

Nicholas sat down on the sofa, inviting Josef to sit beside him, before he set about tearing the brown paper and unwrapping his gift.

“Oh, Jo—” he gasped, when he saw the delicate fabric of the stockings.

Jo watched as Nico held the package by the wrapping paper—as though he were afraid he might soil the immaculate garment with his ink-stained hands.

“They’re stockings,” he explained. “I wanted to spoil you. Do you remember when—”

“You bought me silk,” he answered for him, his breath hitching a little.

Jo reached out, tentatively, to caress his smooth-shaven cheek. “Of course you do.”

“I don’t suppose—” Nico paused, leaning into his touch. “Could I ask you to dress me in them?”

“I was hoping you’d ask that of me,” Jo confessed, with a small smile. “ _Certo ce si_.”

Nico gave a little laugh of his own, mirroring him, and parted the front of his _banyan_.

Jo turned to face Nico, reaching without thinking for the buttons of his breeches.

“You’ll need to remove your smalls, too.”

“ _Certamente_ ,” Nico said, lifting his hips to quickly remove his pants and stockings.

Jo tossed them heedlessly on the floorboards, before grabbing the first stocking from the package.

Nico could hardly breathe as he watched Jo carefully bunch up the delicate fabric of the silk hose before pressing the ball to his toes and slowly work the translucent garment over his foot and ankle, over the flesh of his calf and the knobby bone of his knee and the sensitive skin of his thigh.

Jo smoothed the soft fabric of the stocking before taking a ribbon and tying it in a bow around his thigh.

Nico could hardly wait for Jo to slip on the other stocking.

Jo concentrated on bunching up the fabric of the silk stocking in his hands so he could press it against his lover’s outstretched foot and ever so slowly roll it on over his toes and his foot and his ankle and his calf and his leg.

He paused, then, as he caught the other man’s heated gaze and knew they were both savouring the charged moment between them.

Nico parted his legs wider, wordlessly inviting Jo to keep on dressing him.

He reached for the other ribbon, holding it in his hands so he might run it against the back of his lover’s leg before tying it in a bow like the other.

“Tell me, Nico,” Jo murmured, running his hands against the silk stockings that covered his legs. “Does it feel like they have spun a whisper into cloth?”

“What did you say?”

“I thought you’d remember,” Jo said, looking up at him questioningly. “When I took you to Aleppo, that first time, and you saw all the silk they had. You said—oh, like, _È come un sussurro_!”

“What? It’s like a whisper? What sort of loon would say that?”

“You, you loon!” Jo said, laughing into Nico’s chest.

“Ah, then, I suppose I did,” Nico admitted, running his fingers through Jo’s curly hair.

“And?”

“You tell me,” Nico asked him, wrapping his stockinged legs around Jo and pulling him closer. “Does it feel like a whisper to you?”

“Yes, I think it does,” Joe admitted, brooding, as he began to doubt himself and wonder whether he’d been mistaken.

“You’re over-dressed,” Nico complained, reaching to untie the stock tied around his throat.

Jo helped him when he fumbled with the knot, casting the linen fabric aside.

Nico watched, with rapt attention, as Jo shrugged out of his jacket and pulled his shirt over his head and bared his broad chest.

Jo then knelt between his lover’s stockinged legs and mouthing at his engorged cock.

Nico let his head fall back, giving a drawn-out groan, when Jo wrapped his mouth around him and sucked.

“Fuck,” Nico swore. “You make me feel so spoiled.”

“I want you to feel spoiled,” Jo responded, earnestly, looking up at him from where he knelt between his parted legs. “I want you to ask for what you want and I want to give it to you.”

“I want you to take me.”

Jo obliged him, swallowing his cock to the root and pressing a digit—and then two—to his furled arsehole to open him up. He worked and pleasured his lover until he deemed him ready to receive him and unbuttoned his breeches to release his own swelling member and slowly breached him.

They clutched at each other as they chased their pleasure and came together.

Jo pulled away first, telling himself he was giving Nico space if he needed it.

Nico clutched at the clothing that covered his chest and tried to catch his breath again and was forced to admit, “I’ve not felt like this in so long.”

Jo didn’t answer straight away and instead fussed over the front of his companion’s _banyan_ , trying to cover the wrinkled fabric of his shirt. He didn’t know how he felt. He hadn’t truly felt the sense of discovery or wonder or ardour that he imagined he would. He hadn't felt as though he were bedding the man he'd first travelled with along the Silk Road. He had only felt a familiar sense of close companionship. The disappointment of what he recognized as his own unreasonable expectations left him feeling more than a little lost.

“Say something,” Nico entreated him.

Jo carefully considered his response, afraid to reveal all that he was feeling. “I had worried that perhaps we’d forgotten what it was like—to feel intimacy like this.”

Nico covered Jo’s nervous hands with his own. “I don’t think we could forget, _tesoro_. Only lose focus, for a while. _Perdonami_. I was so focused on something else that I didn’t see that you felt so _abbandonato_.”

Nico waited only a little longer, until they had moved to the bedroom to lie together, to reveal the news that had been worrying him for weeks now.

“There was a letter,” Nico told him, at last, focusing on tracing his fingers through the dark hair that covered his lover’s chest.

“What kind of letter?” Jo asked, moving to sit up on his elbows for what he imagined would become a serious conversation.

“From some planter on Jamaica to a family connection. That’s not important for what I need to tell you.” Nico cleared his throat. “There was a trial.”

“Andromache—” Jo gasped, processing the news.

“She pleaded the belly.” When the court sentenced her to hang, she had claimed that she was quick with Child, knowing full well that the justices would never sentence a pregnant woman to hang before giving birth. “She needs us.”

Jo agreed without thinking. “We have to find her.”

“We’ll need to travel to Spanish Town, first.”

“We could leave on the morrow?”

“If we can find passage on a ship,” Nico countered, leaning against Jo. “It’s only November—and you know how the storms rage on the sea between here and there this time of year. It’s why I’ve not told you until now. Any good captain will be loathe to risk his ship and his crew.”

Jo wrapped his arms around Nico, seeking reassurance now that the day they had been waiting for had come. “What about us? What of the risk to us?”

Nico swallowed, considering it.

“Would we go if we didn’t have to? Do we take that risk because it’s something we want to do or are we only considering it because of the circumstances?”

Nico understood that Jo wasn’t really asking him about Andromache. He was asking him if they truly loved one another or if they were only together because of circumstances beyond their ken.

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Jo felt relieved and worried in equal measure and, when his lip wobbled a little, he let himself weep.

Nico rushed without thinking to ease Jo’s distressed outburst, pressing him with gentle kisses as he fell apart.

“I believe we were meant to find each other,” he swore to him. “No matter the circumstances.”

Jo knocked his nose against Nico’s nose, like a kiss, before pressing his forehead to rest against Nico’s forehead.

“ _Ti amo_ , love of my life, always and forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> _To the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord of the Treasury of Great Britain,_
> 
> _Sir,_
> 
> _I am loathe to inform you that last —, 17 of January, 1721, the convicted felon Anne BONNIE escaped from her prison here in JAMAICA. You will remember this woman as one of the PIRATES convicted in the last trials—she and another, Mary READ, had plead by the belly and were spared the dreadful sentence of the law. It is our opinion that she was aided in her escape—by persons unknown—for she had been kept chained in a cell with iron railings. We were overwhelmed at the time by a force of MAROONS and ZOMBIES that harassed the Town and the Garrison. We have since recovered the bodies of 7 soldiers—killed dead from savage wounds—in the rubble of the prison and found a ship—the GLORIANA, a schooner reportedly owned by one Thomas Spenlow—missing._
> 
> _She set sail under our flag, in a three-masted ship with white sails and a shallow hull with a yellow stripe, that I am told was built in a Boston shipyard in 1708._
> 
> _I have sent copies of this letter to the governors of all our colonies and of the Spanish and French possessions in this part of the world, as well as to the governors of the American commonwealths._
> 
> _If they are taken on your shores, I am entreating you that a trial be held forthwith for PIRACIES, FELONIES, and ROBERIES_ [sic] _committed on the HIGH SEA by this Anne BONNIE and her COMRADES and the sentence executed without delay or other postponement._
> 
> _Your servant,_
> 
> _Sir Nico. Lawes, Governor of Jamaica_


End file.
